Carrollton, Texas-based BuzzBallz has launched a new addition to its brand portfolio – BuzzBallz Cocktails and Chillers Espresso Martini.
The cocktail features coffee notes and a hint of sweetness. In anticipation of National Coffee Day on Sept. 29, the company believes its time to introduce an espresso cocktail to a larger cross-nation market.
BuzzBallz Espresso Martini is sold in 15 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. National rollout will be taking place in spring.
After originating and having a brief popularity stint in the 1990s, the espresso martini remained a fairly obscure drink until 2021, when online mentions of the cocktail started increasing about 300 percent.
“So many people love coffee, but as the day winds down they might rather be looking for a cocktail to drink,” said Merrilee Kick, CEO and founder of BuzzBallz. “Our new Espresso Martini flavor is the best of both worlds for coffee and cocktail lovers alike.”
After cross-referencing psychographic similarities between adult coffee and cocktail consumers, the company’s team began the process of figuring out how to create the espresso martini flavor.
“We’d worked on coffee-flavored cocktails before with our Hazelnut Latte, but the Espresso Martini was the first time we really immersed ourselves in coffee-forward cocktails,” said Charles Irvin, VP of research and development for BuzzBallz.
“Once we had an idea of what we wanted, we sourced a number of different coffee roasts and blends and went through them one-by-one until we landed on one that we thought worked particularly well in an espresso martini.”
Kick is enthusiastic about the prospect of this new flavor bringing in a more diverse range of consumers to the BuzzBallz family. “It’s essentially a cold brew cocktail. I expect demand from both avid and casual coffee lovers to exponentially increase as we introduce this product to new markets,” Kick said.
The Espresso Martini flavor joins the BuzzBallz portfolio of more than a dozen different ready-to-drink cocktail flavors.
For more information, visit buzzballz.com.
